8 ms·

Ask HN: If you had 100 hours to learn something new, what would you learn?

43 points by erkanerol 2y ago

As a software engineer. To boost your career in this era.

ajayoct 2y ago
1. Plumbing 2. Electrical wiring 3. Woodworking 4. Welding 5. Tiling 6. Painting 7. Masonry 8. Roofing 9. Metal fabrication 10. Physical therapy 11. Engine tuning
- konfusinomicon 2y ago
  head start on 1-9...measure twice cut once, and prep work pays dividends
muzani 2y ago
1. Drawing, like proper academic drawing. I think I'm close to the skill cap on mobile dev. Design skill would help a lot, things like seeing lighting and stuff. There's things like ambient light, like if the bottom of an area is purple, the top is green, the bottom will bounce some purplish light onto the middle which affects how shadows will look. This is something AI still has problem grasping. Also things like composition, like which people are on the left, which are on the right. 2. CSS tricks and animation. While other people try to race on Leetcode, my personal favorite is CodePen. 3. Probably learn Flutter and React properly instead of just going in blind and editing code.
CalvinTWebber 2y ago
Sailing
rzzzwilson 2y ago
As a means of stopping myself from walking out on a one year contract to work for a terrible IT telecoms company I learned to fly. But that's probably not exactly what you meant.
Klaster_1 2y ago
A hundred hours won't be sufficient, but I really need to learn a new language in order to secure a better citizenship. With it, my job finding prospects will significantly improve. Being an immigrant sucks, future security isn't as sure.
- kulahan 1y ago
  100 hours of interested, enthusiastic studying is more than enough to become vaguely conversational.
shubhamjain 2y ago
AI, LLM basics. A hundred hours won't even scratch the surface of recent advanced, but I’d like to understand how LLMs work and the main approaches (diffusion, RLHF), their pros and cons. Theory of relativity. I’ve never quite been able to wrap my head around it. Given some free time, I would really want to understand how two simple postulates can lead to such far-reaching conclusions.
- highhedgehog 2y ago
  There is a very good intro on how LLM work by Kharpaty. It's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI and it's 3.30 hours, so way below the 100 hours mark :)
- namaria 2y ago
  Those two things are related. Linear algebra is a fantastic field in mathematics! Mathematical reasoning is a superpower. Most of what is worth learning is some specific case of more general reasoning and at the root of general reasoning lies mathematics. There's no substitute for domain expertise, of course. But being good at generalized reasoning really helps absorb and question domain knowledge (not only in the sense of challenging but also querying), which helps interact productively with specialized domain experts.
- undopamine 2y ago
  I found the last chapter of Griffiths Electrodynamics a good beginner resource for special relativity.
andrei_says_ 2y ago
I’d spend them on 1x1 classes with experienced Argentinian Argentinian Tango instructors consisting mostly of dancing. The Argentinians have a unique approach to the Milonguero style which I’m interested in so in this case they need to be from Argentina ;) Another option would be one of my other interests, again, spent one on one with a world-class instructor and intentional practice.
neuralkoi 2y ago
I want to learn how to dance bachata or salsa.
- TylerLives 2y ago
  How will this help your software engineering career?
  - h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
    Have you seen the women dancing bachata? It will surely boost his confidence off the charts.
    - dcminter 2y ago
      Not because of the women, but learning a (different) partner dance boosted my self-confidence to a remarkable extent (so far as one can identify causes with these things). It's actually not a silly idea.
rockyj 2y ago
Blender, Godot and perhaps Rust. I wish I could do things which I enjoy, not just do things which I need to do to pay the bills.
- samspenc 2y ago
  Somewhat on the similar track - Blender and Unreal Engine for games and cinematics, as a hobby.
thinkingemote 2y ago
To boost my career I think a deep dive into design patterns / CS algorithms. Could be good for many self taught natural programmers too.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Could be good for many self taught natural programmers too. 100%. Tons of self taught folks have glaring gaps in their education when it comes to stuff like patterns and algorithms and make weird mistakes because of it.
petargyurov 2y ago
To boost my career? Probably some management stuff. Otherwise, Blender. Been using it at work for a left field innovation project and I'm kind of hooked.
matthewshere 2y ago
Learn how to systematically map available online resources (APIs, tools, data) to validated user needs found online. Basically, getting better at connecting existing digital 'building blocks' to solve actual problems.
ringofchaos 2y ago
I already know software engineering and can code web applications and use genai sdk in my apps. But I still can't easily figure out to deploy my apps to a VPS. So far I have manually set up my server and database. I want learn more on devops to deploy it using containers. This will enable me to host mutiple service in a VPS and I don't have to use PAAS solutions. I can also easily switch providers too.
- hyperman1 2y ago
  My experience is you can learn this between dev tasks. Find a way to automate deployment (I did ansible)and monitor(eabbix or grafana). Plan, say, half an hout weekly time to review monitoring and logs. Also handle crashes and severe errors in a systemic way, automating them away. Do this for a few months and you've learned devops.
- mmarian 2y ago
  I use CapRover with Hetzner, and it's been a breeze - half a day max. Don't remember the last time I deployed one of my services on managed infra.
zabzonk 2y ago
Are we talking something like two weeks continuous, or an hour here and there?
- erkanerol 2y ago
  100 hours in 6 weeks
- quesomaster9000 2y ago
  That's a good question, what if it's 10 hours per year for 10 years? In that case, I'd probably choose first-aid & the basics of emergency medicine via a couple of half-day or a full-day course per year.
journal 2y ago
ESP32
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
derelicta 2y ago
Labour organisation, militancy and history.
wappieslurkz 2y ago
Touch typing... I'm embarrassed to confess I'm still typing with just 4 fingers while keeping my eyes on the keyboard instead of the screen. Although I doubt it would require 100 hours to learn.
- Breza 1y ago
  Consider buying a split keyboard. It was a game changer for me. By itself, you'll learn to always put your hands on the correct sides of the keyboard.
  - wappieslurkz 1y ago
    Thanks for the tip, I'm mostly bound to a laptop but for touch type training it could help. Any advice for a brand/model?
- Rendello 2y ago
  Just a few days ago I started using Keybr to learn to touch type. It frustrates me less than any other program I've used before, so far. I'm touch-typing this comment... slowly ;) I can type quickly through my own means but very inaccurately. In a recent fast-paced online game the other players assumed I wasn't a native English speaker due to all my typos. I was a Vim user for ten years and would constantly mash the wrong keys. After starting touch-typing a few days ago, I redownloaded the old Vimfx extension to control my web browser from my keyboard. It ended up requiring me to switch to a Firefox fork called Waterfox though, as the modern (post-2017) extensions have to rely on injecting Javascript into the page and don't work well. https://www.keybr.com/ https://www.keybr.com/
  - wappieslurkz 2y ago
    Thanks for the Keybr tip!
- muzani 2y ago
  https://www.colemak.academy/ https://www.colemak.academy/ is actually pretty good for beginners, but switch it to QWERTY layout It took me a few months on keybr honestly when I got a new, ergonomic keyboard. The problem with ergo keyboards is they're split at the middle and suddenly my left hand couldn't reach for what was on the right side like it normally would and I had never realized I was doing it "wrong" all this time.
commandersaki 2y ago
It won't boost my career, but if I had 100 hours I would spend my time learning formal methods for software development probably going through this course: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/FMSD/ https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/FMSD/ .
- sn9 2y ago
  Oh man I was literally googling stuff like this last night. Did you know there were verification competitions? [0] [0] https://alastairreid.github.io/verification-competitions/ https://alastairreid.github.io/verification-competitions/
quesomaster9000 2y ago
Fluid dynamics simulation with OpenCL, 100 hours is about 10-15 days of concerted effort. That's plenty time to get a grasp of the algebra behind it, get something simple running, port to OpenCL naively and start optimizing.
jamesponddotco 2y ago
As a software engineer, probably JavaScript, as I focus on back-end and don’t have many front-end skills aside from a good hand at design. In general, though, since I believe I’ll lose my job to AI, I’d like to learn and become an electrician.
- sn9 2y ago
  executeprogram is excellent for picking up JS/TS. Not necessarily front end, but the language. Frontend Masters might be worth checking out.
  - Rendello 2y ago
    I only did Execute Program for a little bit and don't remember much, but the developer's Destroy All Software screencasts are what taught me how to write parsers. I must have rewatched that video 30 times while I was writing my first one.
thorin 2y ago
I'd probably do either the aws or azure architecture exams. I use both fairly often but have a bit of a gap on the infrastructure side. Alternatively I might do some actual building in serverless technologies rather than just drawing pictures, I'm at a large company so often developers are picking up the detailed tasks. If I wanted to do something completely new I might dive into more detail around security/pen testing although I've noticed that a lot of companies doing this just seem to run a lot of off the shelf tools these days.
tmtvl 2y ago
Working with SIMD. May not take 100 hours, but I'm embarrassed to say I haven't sat myself down to learn it yet.
markus_zhang 2y ago
Is it a whole 100 hours block without fragmentation, or any 100 hours that you can allocate? I assume the first case, i.e. you have about 4 days to learn something. I'd recommend taking up some paid, intensive training as most such trainings take about 3-5 days and you can maximize the learning during the 4 days of timeframe.
- erkanerol 2y ago
  I mean the latter.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Oh I see. I guess it depends on how big one chunk is then. I'd still vote for paid training if you get big chunks. If only smaller chunks are available, hmmm, it's difficult to say. Maybe prepare for a certificate?
LinuxBender 2y ago
Instead of learning software engineering I would want to learn: Chemically induced reprogramming to reverse cellular aging [1] a.k.a. OSKM My first experiments would be on some really old horses. I could probably buy a 30 year old horse from a neighbor. She is on her last leg. I want to make her younger again and then just let her have many more years of chilling and not having to make babies every year. If can learn this well enough to reverse the age of a dozen horses then my second test subject would be myself. If I get that right then my friends could optionally do the same. [1] - https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text
- pmags 2y ago
  This is not meant to be snarky, but I can't help but ask: * Did I miss a tone indicator (/s) in your response? * If not, why do you think that transcriptional reprogramming of fibroblast cells in culture (as per the Yang et al. paper you cite), which results in "reversing trancriptomic age" can be applied to whole organisms? * Ignoring the "de-aging" horses bit, is it realistic to think that getting a handle on the science behind cellular reprogramming is really just a 100 hour task?
  - LinuxBender 2y ago
    can be applied to whole organisms? Because it has been for several years in mice and monkeys. really just a 100 hour task? To learn, yes. It is a well established process. Mice have been aged, de-aged, aged, de-aged using this process. One can find videos on Youtube from Dr. Sinclairs team that show the mice and their physical abilities during the entire process. This has also been used on humans specifically in the optic nerves but it won't be long before it is approved for body-wide usage. I would not expect the learning process to exceed 72 hours not counting breaks.
brudgers 2y ago
Networking …which is only learned by networking. Careers are made of people not knowledge. Good luck.
JonChesterfield 2y ago
Maths. Every hundred hours into it is good.
- sn9 2y ago
  Math Academy would be time well-spent if you haven't mastered their offerings.
  - Rendello 2y ago
    I don't think I had a solid idea of a timeline, but I figured with a couple hours a day I could get through Fundamentals I-III in a month or two. How naive I was! 125 days in. Almost through Fundamentals II.
- aaronbaugher 2y ago
  I was going through a programming course from MIT, and they used some calculus stuff I didn't understand, either never learned or forgot in the last 35 years. So I looked up their calculus class and started on that. Nope, still too advanced, even though I got A's on it in high school. So now I'm doing a pre-calc class and things are coming back to me. Figure in 100 hours I ought to be back up to speed on calculus enough to finish the programming course.
ddgflorida 2y ago
AI prompt engineering, machine learning, etc.
Breza 1y ago
Networking. For an embarrassing amount of time, I knew very little about it other than some IP addresses looked different from others. In 100 hours, you can learn enough to be useful as a dev without going down rabbit holes.
philrox 1y ago
Communitcation/Writing, juggling, a backflip, a handstand, dancing, solving a rubiks cube.
bit-101 1y ago
Why is this phrased as a hypothetical question?

43 points by erkanerol 2y ago

As a software engineer. To boost your career in this era.

1. Plumbing 2. Electrical wiring 3. Woodworking 4. Welding 5. Tiling 6. Painting 7. Masonry 8. Roofing 9. Metal fabrication 10. Physical therapy 11. Engine tuning

konfusinomicon 2y ago
head start on 1-9...measure twice cut once, and prep work pays dividends

muzani 2y ago

1. Drawing, like proper academic drawing. I think I'm close to the skill cap on mobile dev. Design skill would help a lot, things like seeing lighting and stuff. There's things like ambient light, like if the bottom of an area is purple, the top is green, the bottom will bounce some purplish light onto the middle which affects how shadows will look. This is something AI still has problem grasping. Also things like composition, like which people are on the left, which are on the right. 2. CSS tricks and animation. While other people try to race on Leetcode, my personal favorite is CodePen. 3. Probably learn Flutter and React properly instead of just going in blind and editing code.

CalvinTWebber 2y ago

Sailing

rzzzwilson 2y ago

As a means of stopping myself from walking out on a one year contract to work for a terrible IT telecoms company I learned to fly. But that's probably not exactly what you meant.

Klaster_1 2y ago

A hundred hours won't be sufficient, but I really need to learn a new language in order to secure a better citizenship. With it, my job finding prospects will significantly improve. Being an immigrant sucks, future security isn't as sure.

kulahan 1y ago
100 hours of interested, enthusiastic studying is more than enough to become vaguely conversational.

shubhamjain 2y ago

AI, LLM basics. A hundred hours won't even scratch the surface of recent advanced, but I’d like to understand how LLMs work and the main approaches (diffusion, RLHF), their pros and cons. Theory of relativity. I’ve never quite been able to wrap my head around it. Given some free time, I would really want to understand how two simple postulates can lead to such far-reaching conclusions.

highhedgehog 2y ago
There is a very good intro on how LLM work by Kharpaty. It's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI and it's 3.30 hours, so way below the 100 hours mark :)
namaria 2y ago
Those two things are related. Linear algebra is a fantastic field in mathematics! Mathematical reasoning is a superpower. Most of what is worth learning is some specific case of more general reasoning and at the root of general reasoning lies mathematics. There's no substitute for domain expertise, of course. But being good at generalized reasoning really helps absorb and question domain knowledge (not only in the sense of challenging but also querying), which helps interact productively with specialized domain experts.
undopamine 2y ago
I found the last chapter of Griffiths Electrodynamics a good beginner resource for special relativity.

andrei_says_ 2y ago

I’d spend them on 1x1 classes with experienced Argentinian Argentinian Tango instructors consisting mostly of dancing. The Argentinians have a unique approach to the Milonguero style which I’m interested in so in this case they need to be from Argentina ;) Another option would be one of my other interests, again, spent one on one with a world-class instructor and intentional practice.

neuralkoi 2y ago

I want to learn how to dance bachata or salsa.

TylerLives 2y ago
How will this help your software engineering career?
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
  Have you seen the women dancing bachata? It will surely boost his confidence off the charts.
  - dcminter 2y ago
    Not because of the women, but learning a (different) partner dance boosted my self-confidence to a remarkable extent (so far as one can identify causes with these things). It's actually not a silly idea.

rockyj 2y ago

Blender, Godot and perhaps Rust. I wish I could do things which I enjoy, not just do things which I need to do to pay the bills.

samspenc 2y ago
Somewhat on the similar track - Blender and Unreal Engine for games and cinematics, as a hobby.

thinkingemote 2y ago

To boost my career I think a deep dive into design patterns / CS algorithms. Could be good for many self taught natural programmers too.

Suppafly 2y ago
>Could be good for many self taught natural programmers too. 100%. Tons of self taught folks have glaring gaps in their education when it comes to stuff like patterns and algorithms and make weird mistakes because of it.

petargyurov 2y ago

To boost my career? Probably some management stuff. Otherwise, Blender. Been using it at work for a left field innovation project and I'm kind of hooked.

matthewshere 2y ago

Learn how to systematically map available online resources (APIs, tools, data) to validated user needs found online. Basically, getting better at connecting existing digital 'building blocks' to solve actual problems.

ringofchaos 2y ago

I already know software engineering and can code web applications and use genai sdk in my apps. But I still can't easily figure out to deploy my apps to a VPS. So far I have manually set up my server and database. I want learn more on devops to deploy it using containers. This will enable me to host mutiple service in a VPS and I don't have to use PAAS solutions. I can also easily switch providers too.

hyperman1 2y ago
My experience is you can learn this between dev tasks. Find a way to automate deployment (I did ansible)and monitor(eabbix or grafana). Plan, say, half an hout weekly time to review monitoring and logs. Also handle crashes and severe errors in a systemic way, automating them away. Do this for a few months and you've learned devops.
mmarian 2y ago
I use CapRover with Hetzner, and it's been a breeze - half a day max. Don't remember the last time I deployed one of my services on managed infra.

zabzonk 2y ago

Are we talking something like two weeks continuous, or an hour here and there?

erkanerol 2y ago
100 hours in 6 weeks
quesomaster9000 2y ago
That's a good question, what if it's 10 hours per year for 10 years? In that case, I'd probably choose first-aid & the basics of emergency medicine via a couple of half-day or a full-day course per year.

journal 2y ago

ESP32

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

derelicta 2y ago

Labour organisation, militancy and history.

wappieslurkz 2y ago

Touch typing... I'm embarrassed to confess I'm still typing with just 4 fingers while keeping my eyes on the keyboard instead of the screen. Although I doubt it would require 100 hours to learn.

Breza 1y ago
Consider buying a split keyboard. It was a game changer for me. By itself, you'll learn to always put your hands on the correct sides of the keyboard.
- wappieslurkz 1y ago
  Thanks for the tip, I'm mostly bound to a laptop but for touch type training it could help. Any advice for a brand/model?
Rendello 2y ago
Just a few days ago I started using Keybr to learn to touch type. It frustrates me less than any other program I've used before, so far. I'm touch-typing this comment... slowly ;) I can type quickly through my own means but very inaccurately. In a recent fast-paced online game the other players assumed I wasn't a native English speaker due to all my typos. I was a Vim user for ten years and would constantly mash the wrong keys. After starting touch-typing a few days ago, I redownloaded the old Vimfx extension to control my web browser from my keyboard. It ended up requiring me to switch to a Firefox fork called Waterfox though, as the modern (post-2017) extensions have to rely on injecting Javascript into the page and don't work well. https://www.keybr.com/ https://www.keybr.com/
- wappieslurkz 2y ago
  Thanks for the Keybr tip!
muzani 2y ago
https://www.colemak.academy/ https://www.colemak.academy/ is actually pretty good for beginners, but switch it to QWERTY layout It took me a few months on keybr honestly when I got a new, ergonomic keyboard. The problem with ergo keyboards is they're split at the middle and suddenly my left hand couldn't reach for what was on the right side like it normally would and I had never realized I was doing it "wrong" all this time.

commandersaki 2y ago

It won't boost my career, but if I had 100 hours I would spend my time learning formal methods for software development probably going through this course: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/FMSD/ https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/FMSD/ .

sn9 2y ago
Oh man I was literally googling stuff like this last night. Did you know there were verification competitions? [0] [0] https://alastairreid.github.io/verification-competitions/ https://alastairreid.github.io/verification-competitions/

quesomaster9000 2y ago

Fluid dynamics simulation with OpenCL, 100 hours is about 10-15 days of concerted effort. That's plenty time to get a grasp of the algebra behind it, get something simple running, port to OpenCL naively and start optimizing.

jamesponddotco 2y ago

As a software engineer, probably JavaScript, as I focus on back-end and don’t have many front-end skills aside from a good hand at design. In general, though, since I believe I’ll lose my job to AI, I’d like to learn and become an electrician.

sn9 2y ago
executeprogram is excellent for picking up JS/TS. Not necessarily front end, but the language. Frontend Masters might be worth checking out.
- Rendello 2y ago
  I only did Execute Program for a little bit and don't remember much, but the developer's Destroy All Software screencasts are what taught me how to write parsers. I must have rewatched that video 30 times while I was writing my first one.

thorin 2y ago

I'd probably do either the aws or azure architecture exams. I use both fairly often but have a bit of a gap on the infrastructure side. Alternatively I might do some actual building in serverless technologies rather than just drawing pictures, I'm at a large company so often developers are picking up the detailed tasks. If I wanted to do something completely new I might dive into more detail around security/pen testing although I've noticed that a lot of companies doing this just seem to run a lot of off the shelf tools these days.

tmtvl 2y ago

Working with SIMD. May not take 100 hours, but I'm embarrassed to say I haven't sat myself down to learn it yet.

markus_zhang 2y ago

Is it a whole 100 hours block without fragmentation, or any 100 hours that you can allocate? I assume the first case, i.e. you have about 4 days to learn something. I'd recommend taking up some paid, intensive training as most such trainings take about 3-5 days and you can maximize the learning during the 4 days of timeframe.

erkanerol 2y ago
I mean the latter.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Oh I see. I guess it depends on how big one chunk is then. I'd still vote for paid training if you get big chunks. If only smaller chunks are available, hmmm, it's difficult to say. Maybe prepare for a certificate?

LinuxBender 2y ago

Instead of learning software engineering I would want to learn: Chemically induced reprogramming to reverse cellular aging [1] a.k.a. OSKM My first experiments would be on some really old horses. I could probably buy a 30 year old horse from a neighbor. She is on her last leg. I want to make her younger again and then just let her have many more years of chilling and not having to make babies every year. If can learn this well enough to reverse the age of a dozen horses then my second test subject would be myself. If I get that right then my friends could optionally do the same. [1] - https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text

pmags 2y ago
This is not meant to be snarky, but I can't help but ask: * Did I miss a tone indicator (/s) in your response? * If not, why do you think that transcriptional reprogramming of fibroblast cells in culture (as per the Yang et al. paper you cite), which results in "reversing trancriptomic age" can be applied to whole organisms? * Ignoring the "de-aging" horses bit, is it realistic to think that getting a handle on the science behind cellular reprogramming is really just a 100 hour task?
- LinuxBender 2y ago
  can be applied to whole organisms? Because it has been for several years in mice and monkeys. really just a 100 hour task? To learn, yes. It is a well established process. Mice have been aged, de-aged, aged, de-aged using this process. One can find videos on Youtube from Dr. Sinclairs team that show the mice and their physical abilities during the entire process. This has also been used on humans specifically in the optic nerves but it won't be long before it is approved for body-wide usage. I would not expect the learning process to exceed 72 hours not counting breaks.

brudgers 2y ago

Networking …which is only learned by networking. Careers are made of people not knowledge. Good luck.

JonChesterfield 2y ago

Maths. Every hundred hours into it is good.

sn9 2y ago
Math Academy would be time well-spent if you haven't mastered their offerings.
- Rendello 2y ago
  I don't think I had a solid idea of a timeline, but I figured with a couple hours a day I could get through Fundamentals I-III in a month or two. How naive I was! 125 days in. Almost through Fundamentals II.
aaronbaugher 2y ago
I was going through a programming course from MIT, and they used some calculus stuff I didn't understand, either never learned or forgot in the last 35 years. So I looked up their calculus class and started on that. Nope, still too advanced, even though I got A's on it in high school. So now I'm doing a pre-calc class and things are coming back to me. Figure in 100 hours I ought to be back up to speed on calculus enough to finish the programming course.

ddgflorida 2y ago

AI prompt engineering, machine learning, etc.

Breza 1y ago

Networking. For an embarrassing amount of time, I knew very little about it other than some IP addresses looked different from others. In 100 hours, you can learn enough to be useful as a dev without going down rabbit holes.

philrox 1y ago

Communitcation/Writing, juggling, a backflip, a handstand, dancing, solving a rubiks cube.

bit-101 1y ago

Why is this phrased as a hypothetical question?